Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, thanks for spending some time with us at Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. We are so glad you're here. You know, no matter where you are in life or what you're facing today, God has a purpose and plan for your life. Today we continue our series called Building a Better Future. In this series, Rick Warren explores the lives of biblical leaders who rebuild after seasons of hardship and captivity. You'll discover practical biblical principles to help you move forward with hope and confidence as you trust God's plan for your life. And now let's join Rick for the final part of a message called Enlisting Support for Your Dream.

Pastor Rick Warren: All right, here's what you say to enlist support when you're trying to get other people to care about what you care about, to do what you know needs to be done. You see something out there in the world goes, this needs to change, this is not right. How are you going to get other people to help you? Here's step four. Talk about we, not me. Talk about we, not me. You want to create community. The words you use, it's not my dream. Here's what I'm going to do. Now think about this. Nehemiah is an outsider.

He had never lived in Jerusalem. His parents had, probably, but he had never lived in Jerusalem. But even though he's an outsider, he talks like an insider. He talks about we, us, not me, my, and I. In verse 17, now I said to them, you can see the trouble we are in. Circle the word we. You can see the trouble we are in. Come, let us circle us rebuild. Now what's he doing with these words? He's identifying with the people. He says we, not me. He says us, not I. He's building community. Great leaders create a team for the dream.

Nehemiah doesn't arrive in Jerusalem saying, you guys are all a bunch of losers. Uh you're living in a heap of rubble, defenseless, and you've given up and you've become apathetic and and you're used to living like a failure. No, he doesn't he didn't put the blame on him. Now listen, there are going to be many times in your life where you're going to have to you're going to see a problem and you're going to have to choose between fixing the blame or fixing the problem. Anytime you blame others, you lower their motivation. Anytime you accept the blame, you increase the motivation.

Now you you've heard me say this so many times. You spell blame be lame. Anytime you blame you're being lame. Nehemiah doesn't play the role of an outside expert coming in here to tell everybody what a bad job they've been doing. He doesn't say I'm going to be your savior and I'm going to fix everything for you. Instead he says I'm one of you. This is our problem. And together I know that we can succeed this time because God is with us. To accomplish your dream, you have to identify with the feelings of other people.

And you must draw them in offering to help them accomplish something they've always wanted. You create a sense of community. This is what leadership's all about. Now we come to the next step. When you create community, you talk about we, not me. Number five, the next thing you do when you're trying to help people get on board, you paint a picture of what needs to be changed. Paint a picture of what needs to change. You know, you've probably heard the expression I'll believe it when I see it. You know, that's actually true, but in a different way that that phrase is given.

It is actually true. You'll believe it when you see it. Nothing great is ever accomplished with people until they see it in their minds for the first time. You have to see it in your mind first before you can accomplish it. Whether you're an architect building a building or an entrepreneur building a business or you're a teacher planning a lesson or you're a chef cooking a meal or you're a leader leading change or you're a parent working with your kids, you have to see it in your mind and then you have to get others to see it, the end result in their mind before it happens.

So you got to paint a picture. Nehemiah graphically and dramatically painted a picture of how bad the problem was. Remember these people are apathetic. They they've been living in this rubble for years. In fact, he didn't minimize it, he emphasized it. The second part of verse 17 says, you can see, circle that, all the trouble that we're in. You can see. He's saying he's getting them to picture that's the problem. Now why? Because they're not seeing it anymore. When you live around something long enough, it's human nature that you start ignoring it. When you live with a bad situation, you start by justifying it and then you rationalize it and then you ignore it and then you become apathetic about it.

I remember years ago we had a mirror in our bathroom and it got cracked and I don't know why it got cracked, but it just did. And when I first saw it, it really bugged me. We got to get this mirror fixed. We got it really really bothered me. A week later we hadn't gotten it fixed. It still bothered me, but not as much. Two weeks later it didn't bother me hardly at all and six months later it was still there. Why? Because we become comfortable with the ruin and the rubble in our lives. This happens in a lot of marriages.

Status quo is Latin for the mess we're in. You become satisfied and apathetic with less than the best. Now if you're going to enlist support for your dream, you're going to have to create some discontent with the current situation first. And then you 're going to have to picture how it could be better. That's why this series is called Building a Better Future. Nehemiah is getting them to face the facts because he first researched the facts and things weren't good. Things were bad, but he would paint a picture of a better future. Now to change, listen, never occurs until we become discontent.

So if you want to create change in your home, in your marriage, in your family, in your school, in your work, if you want to create change in your office, in your community, in your country, in the world, you have to paint a picture of how it could be better. Okay? You get create discontent and show how it could be better. Now along with this comes step six, Nehemiah's brilliant plan, appeal to people's hearts. That's the sixth thing you do when you're trying to enlist support for a vision, a dream, or a goal, or project.

You know, we often assume that people base their choices on logic uh and reason, but that's just not true. Most of the decisions you make in life are based on how you feel. You base them on your feelings, on your emotions. You make a decision based on your emotions and then later you look for a logical reason to justify what emotional decision you made. So what does Nehemiah do? He appeals to their hearts. He appeals to their desire to feel good about themselves. Nothing wrong with that. And he appeals to them being proud of their city.

The third part of verse 17 he says, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem so we will no longer be living in disgrace. Interesting. The motivation for rebuilding the wall so we will no longer be living in disgrace. The New Jerusalem Bible Translation says, so we will end our humiliation. The New Century Version Translation says, so we won't be ashamed anymore. What is Nehemiah doing? He's appealing to their dignity. Smart guy. He says guys, we're better than this. We're better than this. We don't have to put up with this. We don't have to live in rubble and ruin.

We are God's people. He doesn't want us living in disgrace. Besides it's a poor testimony of our faith. This kind of faith was that Nehemiah is projecting now is a breath of fresh air to people who are discouraged, defeated, and demoralized. He's going we can do this with God's help. We don't have to live in disgrace or shame. And once again we 'll be able to hold our heads high. Now one of the things that this said to the people of Jerusalem was this. This leader, this Nehemiah dude, he's different. He actually cares about us.

The motivation he gives for rebuilding the wall is so we won't be in disgrace. He cares about how we feel. He's not doing this for his personal agenda. He's not making a profit on this. He 's concerned about us. He realizes we're demoralized, we're discouraged, we feel like failures. This is somebody who loves us. He's not trying to make money off us. And you know what? All of that was true of Nehemiah. He didn't want them to be disgraced, but he even had a deeper motivation than that. Nehemiah was concerned for God's glory because not only were the Jewish people being disgraced, God was being disgraced.

You see the Jews were called quote God's chosen people. And yet the whole world was laughing at them, those poor Jews. They claimed to worship the one true God, but they're living in a rubble of a ruined city. Their God must not be very powerful after all. It was a poor testimony. It was an embarrassment to God's reputation. God's name was being defamed by others. So Nehemiah, when he is trying to motivate people to get involved in the dream, he doesn't appeal to external motivations, you know, with little reward systems. He doesn't say uh whoever helps me rebuild the wall will win an all expense paid vacation to the Dead Sea.

No, instead he uses instead of external motivation, rewards, he uses internal and eternal motivation. You'll feel good about yourself and God will be glorified. Now here's the next step that Nehemiah took and you're going to need to do this in getting support for your dream. Number seven, very important. Share your story to inspire others. Share your story to inspire. Verse 18 Nehemiah says this, I also told them about how God had been with me and how he graciously helped me in my conversation with the king in gaining his support. So now Nehemiah gives his testimony.

This is an important part of sharing your dream. People want to know what does it mean to you and what's God doing in your life? Nehemiah is telling his story of trusting God. You need to tell your story of trusting God because when you tell your story of trusting God, it builds faith in other people. When people see your example of living by faith, it motivates them to live by faith. So Nehemiah explains how God put a burden in his heart. He said you know I didn't want this job. In fact I had a very comfortable cushy job in the king's court in Persia.

But God put a discontent in my heart when I saw what was happening to you guys here in Jerusalem. The more I prayed about it, the more God said to me, why don't you be the answer to your own prayer, Nehemiah? And God says that's what I want for you, Nehemiah. This is the dream I'm putting in your heart. So I did my homework and I prayed and I planned and I prepared and God opened the door and gave me the opportunity to share my dream with the king of Persia. And you know what? God changed his heart.

The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord and he turns it any way he wishes. And he gave me everything I wanted. He gave me permission to come. He gave me protection for my journey and he gave me the provision of lumber that we're going to need to succeed. And he's even going to pay for all this project. So you guys, what do you think? That's pretty powerful testimony. Now let me just pause here to say this. If somebody comes to you with a dream and they claim God told me to do this, you have every right to ask them, okay, so what confirming signs from God prove that the dream really is from God?

How has God already helped you? And if they can't say anything about that, well you have every reason to doubt it. Nehemiah could say this is what God has done in my life so far. It was a miracle that the king of Persia was letting him rebuild the wall that he'd previously said will never be rebuilt. So Nehemiah's testimony is thrilling and it's inspirational, it's convincing and the people how do they respond? Of course, positively. Verse 18. So they all responded saying, let us let us not let Nehemiah let us start rebuilding now. So together they began the good work.

Now what's happening here? The vision is being transferred. Let us rebuild the wall. First it was just Nehemiah's vision. Now it's our vision. We are going to do this together. Now let's look at this. After you've created community, after you've painted a picture what needs to change, after you've appealed to people's hearts with internal and ex eternal motivation and after you've shared your personal story of faith and how God's been helping you, you're ready for step eight. Ask for help confidently. You might even just write down ask for help fearlessly. Say you just don't pump people up with all this inspirational dream and then walk away and say have a nice day.

You get specific and you ask for help. This is the moment of truth. Will you join me in this task? Will you join me in the dream? Nehemiah verse 17 Nehemiah says, come, let's rebuild the wall now. You got to ask friends. You got to ask. That is the scary part of having a dream. The Bible says you have not because you ask not. And that's not just true in asking for God's help. It's also true in asking for the help of others. Now in my previous message uh I warned you to not say no for other people.

Never assume that you know their answer uh in advance. If they want to say no, let them say it. Never say no for anybody. Your job is to just ask. Now when you think uh I don't like to ask other people for help. I don't like to ask them for assistance. I 'll just do it myself. When you say I 'll just do it myself, you reveal your own insecurity. You limit what God wants to do in your life because it's limited to just you. And you rob other people of the blessing of being involved.

This church would have never been built by one person. It's been built by thousands and thousands and thousands of people. Now to start of this message I told you that no dream is built without opposition. So the final step is this, number nine. Ignore naysayers and expect God's help. When you you finally lay out the dream and you lay it out on the line and say will you help me, there will be some naysayers. So what? Verses 19 and 20 of Nehemiah two says this, when Sanballat and Tobiah oh now we've added a third guy, Geshem, heard this, they mocked and ridiculed us.

Can you handle that? You don't need the approval of other people to make you happy. What other people think of you is none of your business. They mocked and ridiculed us. They said, what do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are? They asked. You know you haven't done this in 90 years. What do you what do you think now you're going to be able to rebuild the wall? Are you rebelling against the king? They're trying to make him afraid. Maybe the king will come in and smash them all again. Nehemiah says, I simply replied to all this ridicule and mocking.

The God of heaven will give us success. The God of heaven will give us success. We are his servants and we will rebuild this. But you have no claim or right to this city. Now did you notice that a third opponent is mentioned? I need to warn you. I've had this I know this from experience that you farther you go with God's dream, the more likely the opposition will grow too. I didn't have a whole lot of opposition when I first started Saddleback Church, but there's an awful lot now. And in another message we're going to look at six different kinds of opposition uh including this example that Nehemiah had to deal with and how he brilliantly disarmed and defeated every one of these opponents and critics.

So I'm not going to go into that right now, but as we close I just want to point out that Nehemiah did not spend much time responding to critics. I don't spend much time responding to critics. Why? You wouldn't have time to get anything done. If you respond to every critic, the devil will make sure you're constantly criticized. And and you never get anything else done if all you're doing is reacting to what other people think of you. Nehemiah simply replied, the God of heaven will give us success. We are his servants and we will rebuild this wall regardless of your criticism or your attacks or your mocking or your ridiculing whatever.

Now I hope you took some time this past week to begin writing down your thoughts and dreams using the seven steps we looked at for building a life plan that we learned from Nehemiah in our last message. If you didn't, I want to encourage you to start this week. Go back and look at those seven steps in that message on starting to build a life plan. And then you can review these steps that we've just looked at today for how you enlist support for your dream. You know, I have carried this little card in my wallet and in my desk for 42 years.

I've revised it many many many times, uh but this is uh the original. And every time I was worried about are we going to have enough people to help us do what we need to do, I'd pull this card out and it says this, great people are ready to help me at the right time in the right way. People I don't even know yet. I will never give up because I don't have the help, but I will trust God to provide the help that I need because Psalm 37:5 says, commit your way to the Lord, trust him to help you and he will.

God has the resources to help you that you have not even considered. There are multiplied thousands of persons with all sorts of talents and skills and concerns and contacts that God can bring into your life to fulfill his plan and dream. So open your eyes and see the faces of people around you. Open your ears to hear what they're saying. Today, tomorrow, next week you'll meet someone who is just the right person you need. And that right person will come along at just the right time and fulfill the things that you need and you will marvel knowing that God arranged it so beautifully.

I have seen that fulfilled thousands of times in my life. So I want to say to you regardless of the dream that God gives you, you can do this. You you can do this. The same God who used Nehemiah, who would never built anything in his life, wants to use you in a great way. So stop making excuses, start dreaming the dream God has for you. Use the steps that he's given to us in his word that we looked at in the last message on how to write out a life plan. And then when you need when the time is right and you start asking other people to help you, use these steps that we've looked at today.

It will change your life. Let's pray. You know Father, when we look around at our world today we we see a lot of things that need to be changed. There are a lot of people living their lives in rubble and ruin. And they've become disillusioned and demoralized and discouraged, defeated and even apathetic. And they need somebody to help them see your dream for their lives. I'm asking you Father, I really am, to help us see just a glimpse of what you would like to do in our lives and through our lives and help us just like you helped Nehemiah to take these steps of faith in making a difference in our world.

If you've never opened your life to Christ, say Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. I want to know your purpose and plan for my life. Thank you for loving me. I want to follow you. I want to learn about you. I need you to be my manager, my Lord and savior. And I want my life to count for you. I want to be what you made me and intended for me to be. Jesus Christ, I humbly ask you to save me. In your name I pray. Amen. You know if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it?

There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, Rick at pastorrick.com and say Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ and I'll send you some material that'll help you on your journey with Jesus and I'll also pray for you. God bless you.

Guest (Male): What a fantastic message from Pastor Rick. You know Daily Hope is changing lives every day. Here's Pastor Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

Pastor Rick Warren: Today I'd like to read a testimony that really blessed me. It shows how even when you make mistakes God's faithful to forgive you and that he's always working in your life to bring about everything together for good in your life. Not everything is good in your life, but God works at all for good in your life. Now this is from a man who says he's a recovering addict and this is part of his story uh that starts when he listened to a Daily Hope podcast. Here's what he wrote. Pastor Rick, a couple of months ago I started a 12-step program.

In working the steps and in turning my addiction over to God, I searched out many sources for uh daily inspirational, daily devotionals, daily meditations to help me reconnect with the Lord as a support for the progress in my recovery. Now in what just seemed to be a random chance seemed to be, I just came across your Daily Hope podcast and I blindly just picked a message from early July. I 'm sure someone a lot of other people have done that too. Well the very first one I listened to was on Romans seven, which is all about why do I do the wrong things that I don't want to do when I know it's wrong and what makes me do that?

I can't believe that was the first one you listened to. Well knocked me over with a feather. It was a bolt of lightning that I needed to hear and it was followed by tears of joy because the very next podcast of course was Romans eight, which is the solution to my dilemma. That's right folks, Romans seven explains the mess we're in. Romans eight explains how to get out of it. He says Rick, it was like a smack on the head by divine intervention. So I joined a small group and I haven't missed a week since and I love it.

And I have a weekly Bible study with a close friend who graciously offered to help me. And I subscribed to your daily devotional email. And I've continued to listen to your podcast when I go for my morning walk. He says the spiritual growth that I've achieved in in a relatively short period of time is really nothing short of remarkable. It's a miracle and it's a blessing and it's helped me turn my life around. And now I understand why God allowed me to suffer through all my addiction and that the path to recovery is through Jesus Christ.

From the bottom of my heart, Rick, thank you for all you do through him. Well wow wow wow. Uh this testimony is a powerful reminder of how God can take everything in our lives, the mistakes, the sins, the failures, the hurts, the bad decisions, even destructive habits. And guess what? God can even bring good out of them. The Bible says in all things God works for the good of those who love him. It doesn't say all things are good because not all things are good, but in all things God is working for the good of those who love him.

That's Romans eight 28. Now this story is a beautiful example of Romans eight 28 and that truth. Listen very closely. No matter what we've done, I'll say it again, no matter what we've done, we're never outside of God master plan for our lives. Your life is not random. In this case God led somebody to Daily Hope podcast just at the right moment to hear exactly what he needed. Now God could have used any method, he could have used any person, he could have used any podcast, but God in this instance chose to use Daily Hope.

You know friends, it's because of your support, your prayers, and your giving that we're able to make Daily Hope Bible teaching available to over 35 million people every month. So thank you. Uh thanks a lot. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for your support. This man who was a recovering addict was helped because you you cared enough to support this ministry. So let me just say it again. I don't ever get tired of saying it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Guest (Male): Hey if you'd like to support Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, just go to pastorrick.com. That's pastorrick.com or you can text the word hope to 70309. That's the word hope to 70309. And really from the bottom of our hearts we thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere. Hey be sure to join us next time when we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.